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^EVERETT'S ADDRESS 

BEFORE THE 

PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY 

IN YALE COLLEGE. 



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AN 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY 



IN YALE COLLEGE, 



NEW HAVEN, AUGUST 20, 1833. 



BY EDWARD EVERETT. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE SOCIETY 



NEW HAVEN: 

HEZEKIAH HOWE & Co. 



1833. 



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PHnlp.l by llczFkii tli'liowe A <!o. 



ADDRESS 



Mr. President and Gentlemen, 

It has given me peculiar satisfaction to obey your call, and ap- 
pear before you on this occasion. I take a sincere pleasure, as an 
affectionate and dutiful child of Harvard, and as an humble member 
of the branch of our fraternity, which is there established, in present- 
ing myself, within the precincts of this ancient and distinguished sem- 
inary, for the discharge of the agreeable duly, which you have as- 
signed me. I rejoice in the confidence, which your invitation implies, 
that I know neither sect nor party, In the Republic of Letters ; and 
that I enter your halls, with as much assurance of a kind reception, 
as I would those of my own revered and ever gracious Alma Mater. 
This confidence does me no more than justice. Ardently and grate- 
fully attached to the institution, in which I received my education, I 
could in no way so effectually prove myself its degenerate child, as 
by harboring the slightest feeling of jealousy, at the expanded and 
growing reputation of this its distinguished rival. In no way could I 
so surely prove myself a tardy scholar of the School, in which I 
have been brought up, as by refusing to rejoice in the prosperity 
and usefulness of every sister institution, devoted to the same good 
cause ; and especially of this the most eminent and efficient of her 
associates. 

There are recollections of former times, well calculated to form a 
bond of good feeling between our Universities. We cannot forget 
that, in the early days of Harvard, when its existence almost depended 
on the precarious contributions of its friends, — contributions not of mu- 
nificent affluence, but of pious poverty, — not poured into the acade- 
mic coffers, in splended dotations, but spared from the scanty means 
of an infant and destitute country, and presented in their primitive 
form, a bushel of wheat, a cord of wood, and a string of Indian beads, 
— (this last, not a little to the annoyance of good old President Dun- 
ster, who, as the records of the Commissioners of the United Colonies 
tell us, was sorely perplexed, in sifting out from the mass of the gen- 
uine quahog and periwinkle, bits of blue glass and colored stones, fe- 
loniously intermixed, without the least respect for the purity of the 



Colony's wampum),* we cannot forget that, in that day of small 
things, the contributions of Connecticut and New Haven, — as the two 
infant colonies were distinguished, — flowed as liberally to the support 
of Cambridge, as those of Plymouth and Massachusetts. Still less 
would I forget, that, of the three first generations of the Fathers of 
Connecticut, those, who were educated in America, received their 
education at Cambridge ; that the four first Presidents of Yale were 
graduates of Harvard ; and that of all your distinguished men in 
church and state for nearly a hundred years, a goodly proportion 
were fitted for usefulness in life within her venerable walls. If the 
success of the child be the joy of the parent, and the honor of the 
pupil be the crown of the master, with what honest satisfaction may 
not our Institutions reflect, that, in this early and critical state of 
the country's growth, when the direction taken and the character im- 
pressed were decisive of interminable consequences, they stood to 
each other in this interesting relation. And while we claim the right 
of boasting of your character and institutions, as in some degree the 
fruit of a good old Massachusetts' influence, we hope you will not 
have cause to feel ashamed of the auspices, under which, to a certain 
extent, the foundation of those institutions was laid and their early 
progress encouraged. 

In choosing a topic, on which to address you this morning, I should 
feel a greater embarrassment than I do, did I not suppose, that your 
thoughts, like my own, would flow naturally into such a channel of 
reflection, as may be presumed at all times to be habitual and famil- 
iar with men of liberal education or patriotic feeling. The great util- 
ity of occasions like this and of the addresses they elicit is not to im- 
part stores of information laboriously collected, — not to broach new 
systems, requiring carefully weighed arguments for their defence, or 
a multitude of well arranged facts for their illustration. We meet, at 
these literary festivals, to promote kind feeling ; to impart new 
strength to good purposes ; to enkindle and animate the spirit of im- 
provement, in ourselves and others. We leave our closets, our offi- 
ces, and our studies, to meet and salute each other in these pleasant 
paths ; to prevent the diverging walks of life from wholly estranging 
those from each other, who were kind friends at its outset ; to pay 
our homage to the venerated fathers, who honor with their presence 



* Hazard's Stale papers, Vol. II. p. 124. 



the return of these Academic festivals ; and those of us, alas, who 
are no longer young, to make acquaintance with the ardent and in- 
genuous, who are following after us. The preparation for an occa- 
sion like this is in the heart not in the head ; it is in the attachments 
formed and the feelings inspired, in the bright morning of life. Our 
preparation is in the classic atmosphere of the place, in the tran- 
quillity of the academic grove, in the unoffending peace of the occa- 
sion, in the open countenance of long parted associates joyous at 
meeting, and in the kind and indulgent smile of the favoring throng, 
which bestows its animating attendance on these our humble academ- 
ic exercises. 

When I look around upon the assembled audience, and reflect, 
from how many different places of abode throughout our country 
the professional part of it is gathered, and in what a variety of pur- 
suits and duties, it is there occupied ; and when I consider that this 
our literary festival is also honored with the presence of many from 
every other class of the community, all of whom have yet a common 
interest, in one subject at least, I feel as if the topic, on which I am 
to ask your attention were imperatively suggested to me. It is the 
nature and efficacy of Education, as the great human instrument of 
improving the condition of man. 

Education has been, at some former periods, exclusively, and more 
or less, at all former periods, the training of a learned class ; the 
mode, in which men of letters or the members of the professions ac- 
quired that lore, which enabled them to insulate themselves from the 
community, and gave them the monopoly of rendering the services 
in church and state, which the wants or imaginations of men made 
necessary, and of the honors and rewards, which, by the political 
constitution of society, attached to their discharge. 

I admit, that there was something generous and liberal in educa- 
tion ; something popular, and, if I may so express it, republican, in 
the educated class; — even at the darkest period. Learning, even 
in its most futile and scholastic forms, was still an affair of the mind. 
It was not like hereditary rank, mere physical accident : it was not 
like military power, mere physical force. It gave an intellectual in- 
fluence, derived from intellectual superiority, and it enabled some 
minds, even in the darkest ages of European history, to rise from 
obscurity and poverty, to be the lights and guides of mankind. Such 
was Beda, the great luminary of a dark period, a poor and studious 
monk, who, without birth or fortune, became the great teacher of 





science and letters to the age, in which he lived. Such, still more emi- 
nently, was his illustrious pupil Alcuin, who by the simple force of 
mental energy, employed in intellectual pursuits, raised himself from 
the cloister to be the teacher, companion, and friend of Charlemagne j 
and to whom it has been said, that France is indebted, for all the 
polite literature of his own and the succeeding ages.* Such, at a 
later period, was another poor monk, Roger Bacon, the precursor, 
and, for the state of the times in which he lived, scarcely the inferior, 
of his namesake, the immortal Chancellor. 

But a few brilliant exceptions do not affect the general character 
of the education of former ages. It was a thing apart from the con- 
dition, the calling, the service, and the participation of the great mass 
of men. It was the training of a privileged class ; and was far too 
exclusively the instrument, by which one of the favored orders of 
society was enabled to exercise a tyrannical and exclusive control 
over the millions, which lay wrapt in ignorance and superstition. It 
is the great glory of the happy age, in which we live, that learning, 
once the instrument of this bondage, has become the instrument of 
reform ; that instead of an educated class, we have made some good 
approach to an educated community. That intellectual culture, which 
gave to a few the means of maintaining an ascendancy over the fears 
and weaknesses of their age, has now become the medium of a grand 
and universal mental equality, and, humanly speaking, the great con- 
cern of man. It has become the school of all the arts, the prepa- 
ration for all the pursuits, the favorite' occupation of leisure, the or- 
nament of every age, office, vocation, and sex. In a word education 
is now the preparation of a very considerable portion of the mass 
of mankind for the duties, which in the present state of the world 
devolve upon them. 

This single reflection shews, that education, in this country particu- 
larly, is a word of more comprehensive and deeper import than in any 
other. The mass of the people here perform a different office from 
that, which they have ever performed before. Whether this be for 
good or for evil is a question which may be harmlessly debated, 



* " El quicquid politioris literature isto et sequentibus saeculis Gallia ostentat 
tot um acceptum referri debet. Ei Academise Parisiensis, Turoncnsis, Fuldensis, 
Suessionensis, aliseque plures originem et increments debent, quibns ille, si non 
praesens preefuit, ant fundamenla posuit, saltern doctrina prrclnxit, exemplo prauvit, 
et beneficiis a < larolo impretratia adauxit." — Cave, Hist. Lit. S<er vn. An. 780, < /- 
tedinthi lift ' Ucuin in tin Biographia Britaimica, 



between the friends and vilifiers of the country ; but the fact, I sup- 
pose will not be disputed. It would be foreign from the purposes 
of this address, and superfluous in the presence of this audience, to 
enumerate the duties to be performed by the people, under a politi- 
cal constitution like ours. This topic is familiar to us all. 1 now 
only allude to it, as suggesting the corresponding scope of education, 
as it must be understood and applied. 

Let us then dwell for a moment, on what is to be effected by edu- 
cation, considered in its ultimate objects and most comprehensive 
sense, in which, of course, is included, as the most important ele- 
ment, the sound and enlightened influence of deep religious principle, 
to be cherished and applied, through the institutions existing for that 
sacred purpose. 

A great work is to be done. What is it, in its general outline and 
first principles? 

To answer this question, we must remember, that of the generation 
now on the stage, by which the business of the country, public and 
private, is carried on, not an individual, speaking in general terms, will 
be in a state of efficient activity, and very few in existence, thirty 
years hence. Not merely those, by whom the government is admin- 
istered and the public service performed, in its various civil and 
military departments, will have passed away ; but all who are doing 
the great, multifarious, never-ending work of social life, from the 
highest teacher of spiritual wisdom and the profoundest expositor of 
the law, to the humblest artisan, will have ceased to exist. The work 
is to go on ; the government is to be administered, laws are to be 
enacted and executed, peace preserved or war levied, the will of 
the people to be expressed by their suffrages, and the vast system 
of the industrious action of a great people, in all their thousand oc- 
cupations, by sea and land, to be kept up and extended ; but those 
now employed in all this great work are to cease from it and others 
are to take their places. 

Like most of the great phenomena of life; — miracles, if I may so 
say, of daily occurrence ; — this vast change, this surcease of a whole 
generation, with the duties that flow from it, loses, from its familiarity, 
almost all power of affecting the imagination. The political revo- 
lution, which subverts one crowned family, which prostrates a king 
to elevate an emperor, and cements his throne with the blood of some 
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the wretched victims of his ambi- 
tion, is the wonder of the age j the perpetual theme of discourse ; 



8 

the standing topic of admiration. But this great revolution, which 
prostrates not one man, nor one family, in a single nation ; but every 
man, in every family, throughout the world ; which bids an entire 
new congregation of men to start into existence and action ; which 
fills with new incumbents, not one blood-stained seat of royalty, but 
every post of active duty, and every retreat of private life ; this 
new creation steals on us silently and gradually, like all the primordi- 
al operations of Providence, and must be made the topic of express 
disquisition, before its extent and magnitude are estimated, and the 
practical duties to be deduced from it are understood. 

Such a revolution, however, is impending, — as decisive, as com- 
prehensive, as real, as if, instead of being the gradual work of thirty 
years, it were to be accomplished in a day or an hour : and so much 
the more momentous, for the gradual nature of the process. Were 
the change to be effected at once, were this generation swept off and 
another brought forward, by one great act of creative energy, it would 
concern us only as speculative philanthropists, what might be the char- 
acter of our successors. Whether we transmitted them a heritage 
honored or impaired ; or whether they succeeded to it well trained to 
preserve and increase, or ready to waste it, would import nothing 
to our interests or feelings. But by the law of our nature, the gen- 
erations of men are most closely interlaced with each other, and the 
decline of one and the accession of the other are gradual. One sur- 
vives and the other anticipates its activity. Thus while, in the de- 
cline of life we are permitted to reap on the one hand, while we 
live, a rich reward for all that we have attempted patriotically and 
honestly, in public or private, for the good of our fellow men ; on the 
other hand, retribution rarely fails to overtake us, as individuals or 
communities, for the neglect of public duties, or the violation of the 
social trust. 

We still have judgment here ; that we hut teach 
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
To plague the inventor: this even handed justice 
Commends the ingredients of the poisoned chalice 
To our own lips. 

By this law of our natures, the places which we (ill in the world 
are to be taken from us; we are to be dispossessed of our share in 
the honors and emoluments of life ; driven from our resorts of busi- 
ness and pleasure ; ousted from our tenements ; ejected from our 
estates : banished from the soil we called our own, and interdicted 



fire and water in our native land ; and those, who ward off this des- 
tiny the longest, after holding on a little while with a convulsive grasp, 
making a few more efforts, exposing their thin grey hairs in another 
campaign or two, will gladly, of their own accord, hefore a great 
while, claim to he exempts in the service. 

But this revolution connects itself with the constitution of our na- 
ture, and suggests the great principles of education, as the duty and 
calling of man ; and why ? Because it is not the work of violent 
hands ; hecause it is the law of our heing. It is not an outraged 
populace, rising in their wrath and fury to throw off the burden of 
centuries of oppression. Nor is it an inundation of strange barbari- 
ans, issuing nation after nation, from some remote and inexhaustible 
officina gentium, lashed forward to the work of destruction, by the 
chosen scourges of God ; although these arc the means, by which, 
when corruption has attained a height, beyond the reach of ordinary 
influences, a preparation for a great and radical revolution is made. 
But the revolution of which I speak, and which furnishes the princi- 
ples of the great duty of education, — all comprehensive and unspar- 
ing as it is, — is to be effected, by a gentle race of beings, just stepping 
over the threshold of childhood ; many of them hardly crept into ex- 
istence. They are to be found within the limits of our own country, 
of our own community, beneath our own roofs, clinging about our 
necks. Father, he whom you folded in your arms and carried in 
your bosom, whom, with unutterable anxiety, you watched through the 
perilous years of childhood, whom you have brought down to col- 
lege, this very commencement, and are dismissing from beneath 
your paternal guard, with tearful eyes and an aching heart, it is he, 
who is destined, (if your ardent prayers are heard), to outthunder 
you at the forum and in the Senate House. Fond mother, the fu- 
ture rival of your not yet fading charms, the matre pulcra fdict pul- 
crior, is the rose bud, which is beginning to open and blush by your 
side. Destined to supersede us in all we hold dear, they are the ob- 
jects of our tenderest cares. Soon to outnumber us, we spare no 
pains to protect and rear them ; and the strongest instinct of our 
hearts urges us, by every device and appliance, to bring forward 
those, who are to fill our places, possess our fortunes, wear our hon- 
ors, snatch the laurel from our heads, the words from our lips, the 
truncheon of command from our hands, and at last gently crowd us, 
worn out and useless, from the scene. 

2 



10 

I have dwelt on this connection of nature and affection between 
the generations of men, because it is the foundation of the high Phi- 
losophy of education. It places the duty of imparting it upon the 
broad eternal basis of natural love. It is manifest that, in the prov- 
ident constitution of an intellectual order of beings, the trust of pre- 
paring each generation of which it was to consist, for the perform- 
ance of its part on the great stage of life, was all-important, all-es- 
sential : too vitally so to be put in charge, with any but the most in- 
timate principles of our being. It has accordingly been interwoven 
with the strongest and purest passions of the heart. Maternal fond- 
ness ; a father's thoughtful care ; the unreasoning instincts of the fam- 
ily circle ; the partialities, the prejudices of blood are all made to op- 
erate as efficient principles, by which the risen generation is urged 
to take care of its successor : and when the subject is pursued to its 
last analysis, we find that education in its most comprehensive form, 
the general training and preparation of our successors, is the great 
errand, which we have to execute in the world. We either assume 
it as our primary business, or depute it to others, because we think 
they will better perform it, while we are engaged in occupations sub- 
sidiary to this. Much of the practical and professional part we di- 
rect ourselves. We come back to it as a relaxation or a solace. 
We labor to provide the means of supplying it to those we love. 
We retrench in our pleasures, that we may abound in this duty. 
It animates our toils, dignifies our selfishness, makes our parsimony 
generous, furnishes the theme for the efforts of the greatest minds ; 
and directly or indirectly fills up our lives. 

In a word then, we have before us, as the work to be done by this 
generation, to train up that which is to succeed us. 

This is a work of boundless compass, difficulty, and interest. Con- 
sidered as brethren of the human family, it looks, of course, to the 
education of all mankind. If we confine ourselves to our duty, as 
American citizens, the task is momentous, almost beyond the power 
of description. Though the view, which I would at this time take 
of the subject, does not confine itself to the fortunes of a single na- 
tion, I will dwell upon it, for a moment, exclusively in relation to 
this country. I will suppose, that our union is to remain unbroken 
for another generation ; a supposition, which I trust 1 may safely 
make; and if this should be the case, it is no violent presumption to 
suppose, that, in all respects, the country will continue to advance, 
with a rapidity, equal to that, which has marked its progress, for the 



11 

last thirty years. On this supposition, the close of another genera- 
tion, will see our population swelled to above thirty millions ; all our 
public establishments increased, in the same ratio ; four or five new 
states added to the union ; towns and villages scattered over regions, 
now lying in the unbroken solitude of nature ; roads cut across path- 
less mountains ; rivers, now unexplored, alive with steamboats ; and 
all those parts of the country, which at this time are partially settled, 
crowded with a much denser population, with all its attendant struc- 
tures, establishments, and institutions. In other words, besides re- 
placing the present numbers, a new nation, more than fifteen millions 
strong, will exist within the United States. The wealth of the coun- 
try will increase still more rapidly ; and all the springs of social life, 
which capital moves, will of course increase in power ; and a much 
more intense condition of existence will be the result. 

It is for this state of things, that the present generation is to edu- 
cate and train its successors; and on the care and skill, with which 
their education is conducted, on the liberality, magnanimity, and sin- 
gle-heartedness, with which we go about this great work, — each in 
his proper sphere and according to his opportunities and vocation, — 
will, of course, depend the honor and success, with which those who 
come after us, will perform their parts, on the great stage of life. 

This reflection of itself would produce a deep impression of the 
importance of the great work of education, to be performed by the 
present generation of men. But we must farther take into consid- 
eration, in order to the perfect understanding of the subject, the qual- 
ity of that principle, which is to receive, and of that which is to im- 
part, the education ; that is, of the mind of this age acting upon the 
mind of the next ; both Natures indefinitely expansive, in their capa- 
cities of action and apprehension ; natures, whose powers have nev- 
er been defined ; whose depths have never been sounded ; whose 
orbit can be measured alone, by that superior intelligence, which 
has assigned its limits, if limits it have. When we consider this, we 
gain a vastly extended and elevated notion of the duty, which is to 
be performed. It is nothing less than to put in action the entire 
mental power of the present day, in its utmost stretch, consistent with 
happiness and virtue, and so as to develope and form the utmost 
amount of capacity, intelligence, and usefulness, of intellectual and 
moral power and happiness, in that which is to follow. We are not 
merely to transmit the world as we receive it ; to teach, in a sta- 
tionary repetition, the arts which we have received ; as the dove 



12 

builds this year just such a nest, as was built by the dove, that went 
out from the ark, when the waters had abated ; but we are to apply 
the innumerable discoveries, inventions, and improvements, which 
have been successively made in the world, and never more than of 
late years, and combine, and elaborate them into one grand system 
of increased instrumentality, condensed energy, invigorated agen- 
cy, and quickened vitality, in forming and bringing forward our 
successors. 

These considerations naturally suggest the enquiry, how much 
can be done, by a proper exertion of our powers and capacities, to 
improve the condition of our successors? Is there reason to hope, 
that any great advances can be made ; that any considerable stride 
can be taken, by the moral and intellectual agency of this age, as ex- 
erted in influencing the character of the next ? 

I know of no way to deal practically with this great problem, but 
to ask more particularly what is effected, in the ordinary course of 
intellectual action and reaction. What is the average amount of the 
phenomena of education, in their final result, which the inspection of 
society presents to us ? How much is effected so frequently and cer- 
tainly, as to authorize a safe inference, as what may be done, in the 
ordinary progress of the mind, and conjectures as to its possible 
strides, bounds, and flights? 

We can make this enquiry on no other assumed basis, but that of 
the natural average equality of all men, as rational and improvable 
beings. I do not mean that every individual is created, with a phys- 
ical and intellectual constitution capable of attaining, with the same 
opportunities, the same degree of improvement. I cannot assert that, 
nor would I willingly undertake to disprove it. I leave it aside ; and 
suppose that, on an average, men are born with equal capacities. 
What then do we behold, as regards the difference resulting from 
education and training? Let us take examples, in the two extremes. 
On the one hand, we have the New Zealand savage ; but little bet- 
ter, in appearance, than the Ourang Outang, his fellow tenant of the 
woods, which afford much the same shelter to both ; almost destitute 
of arts, except that of horribly disfiguring the features, by the painful 
and disgusting process of tatooing, and that of preparing a rude war 
club, with which he destroys his fellow savage of the neighboring 
tribe ; his natural enemy while he lives ; his food, if he can conquer 
or kidnap him ; laying up no store of provision, but one, which I 
scarce dare describe, — which consists in plunging a stick into the 



13 

water, where it is soon eaten to honey comb by the worms, which 
abound in tropical climates, and which then taken out furnishes in 
these worms a supply of their most favorite food to these forlorn chil- 
dren of nature. — Such is this creature from youth to age, from fa- 
ther to son, — a savage, a cannibal, a brute ; — a human being, a fel- 
low-man, a rational and immortal soul ; carrying about under that 
squalid loathsome exterior, — hidden under those brutal manners, and 
vices disgusting at once and abominable, a portion of the intellectual 
principle, which likens man to his maker. — This is one specimen of 
humanity ; how shall we bring another into immediate contrast with 
it? How better, than by contemplating what may be witnessed on 
board the vessel, which carries the eulightened European or Amer- 
ican to these dark and dreary corners of the Earth ? You there be- 
hold a majestic vessel, bounding over the billows from the other side 
of the globe ; easily fashioned to float, in safety, over the bottomless 
sea ; to spread out her broad wings, and catch the midnight breeze, 
guided by a single drowsy sailor at the helm, with two or three com- 
panions reclining listlessly on the deck, gazing into the depths of the 
starry heavens. The commander of this vessel, not surpassing thou- 
sands of his brethren in intelligence and skill, knows how, by point- 
ing his glass at the heavens, and taking an observation of the stars, 
and turning over the leaves of his " Practical Navigator," and ma- 
king a few flgures on his slate, to tell the spot, which his vessel has 
reached on the trackless sea : — and he can also tell it, by means of 
a steel spring and a few brass wheels, put together in the shape of a 
chronometer. The glass with which he brings the heavens down to 
the earth, and by which he measures the twenty one thousand six 
hundredth part of their circuit, is made of a quantity of flint, sand, and 
alkali, — coarse opaque substances, which he has melted together 
into the beautiful medium, which excludes the air and the rain and 
admits the light, — by means of which he can count the orders of an- 
imated nature in a dew-drop, and measure the depth of the vallies 
in the moon. He has, running up and down his mainmast, an iron 
chain, fabricated at home, by a wonderful succession of mechanical 
contrivances, out of a rock brought from deep caverns in the earth, 
and which has the power of conducting the lightning, harmlessly 
down the sides of the vessel, into the deep. He does not creep tim- 
idly along from headland to headland, nor guide his course across a 
narrow sea, by the north star ; but he launches bravely on the path- 
less and bottomless deep, and carries about with him in a box a faith- 



14 

ful little pilot, who watches when the eye of man droops with fatigue, 
a small and patient steersman, whom darkness does not blind, nor 
the storm drive from his post, and who points from the other side of the 
globe, — through the convex earth, — to the steady pole. Jf he falls in 
in with a pirate, he does not wait to repel him, hand to hand ; but 
he puts into a mighty engine a handful of dark powder, into which 
he has condensed an immense quantity of elastic air, and which, 
when it is touched by a spark of fire, will instantly expand into its 
original volume, and drive an artificial thunderbolt before it, against 
the distant enemy. When he meets another similar vessel on the 
sea, homeward bound from a like excursion to his own, he makes a 
few black marks, on a piece of paper, and sends it home, a distance 
of ten thousand miles ; and thereby speaks to his employer, to his 
family, and his friends, — as distinctly and significantly, as if they 
were seated by his side. At the cost of half the labor, with which 
the savage procures himself the skin of a wild beast, to cover his na- 
kedness, this child of civilized life has provided himself with the most 
substantia], curious, and convenient clothing, — textures and tissues 
of wool, cotton, linen, and silk, — the contributions of the four quar- 
ters of the globe, and of every kingdom of nature. — To fill a vacant 
hour, or dispel a gathering cloud from his spirits, he has curious in- 
struments of music, which speak another language of new and strange 
significance to his heart ; — which make his veins thrill and his eyes 
overflow with tears, without the utterance of a word, — and with one 
sweet succession of harmonious sounds, send his heart back, over 
the waste of waters, to the distant home, where his wife and his 
children are gathered around the fireside, trembling at the thought, 
that the storm, which beats upon the windows, may perhaps over- 
take their beloved voyager on the distant seas. And in his cabin, 
he has a library of volumes, — the strange production of a machine 
of almost magical powers, — which, as he turns over their leaves, en- 
able him to converse with the great and good of every, clime and 
age, and which, even repeat to him, in audible notes, the Laws of 
his God and the promises of his Savior, and point out to him that 
happy land, which he hopes to reach, when his flag is struck and his 
sails are furled, and the voyage of life is over. 

The imaginations of those, whom I have the honor to address, 
will be able to heighten this contrast, by a hundred traits on either 
side, for which I have not time ; but even as I have presented it, will 
it be deemed extravagant, if I say, that there is a greater difference 



15 

between the educated child of civilized life and the New Zealand 
savage, than between the New Zealand savage and the Ourang Ou- 
tan g ? — And yet the New Zealander was born a rational being, like 
the civilized European and American ; and the civilized European 
and American entered life, like the New Zealander, a helpless wail- 
ing babe. 

This then is the difference made by Education ; — made by Edu- 
cation. I do not mean that if a school were set up in New Zealand, 
you could convert the rising generation of savage children, in eight 
or ten years, into a civilized, well-educated, orderly society. I will 
not undertake to say, what could be done with an individual of that 
race, taken at birth and brought to a Christian country, and there 
reared, under the most favorable circumstances ; nor do I know into 
what sort of a being one of our children would grow up, — supposing 
it could survive the experiment, — were it taken from the nurse's arms, 
and put in charge to a tribe of New Zealanders. But it is, upon the 
whole, Education, in the most comprehensive sense, which makes 
the vast difference, which I have endeavored to illustrate, and which 
actually, in the case of a civillized person, transforms his intellect 
from what it is at birth, into what it becomes in the mature, educated, 
consummate man. 

These reflections teach us what education ordinarily accomplishes. 
They illustrate its power, as measured by its effects. Let us now 
make a single remark, on its prodigious efficacy, measured by the 
shortness of the time, within which it produces its wonders. When we 
contemplate the vast amount of the arts useful and mechanical, elegant 
and literary ; — the sciences pure and mixed, and of the knowledge 
practical and speculative belonging to them ; — a portion of which, — 
sometimes a very large portion, — is within the command of every 
well educated person, the wonder we should naturally feel may be a 
little abated by the consideration, that this is the accumulated pro- 
duct of several thousand years of study, — the fruits of which have 
been recorded, or transmitted by tradition, from age to age. But 
when we reflect again upon the subject, we find, that though this 
knowledge has been for four or five thousand years, in the process of 
accumulation, and consists of the condensed contributions of great 
and gifted minds, or of the mass of average intellect, transmitted 
from race to race, since the dawn of letters and arts in Phenicia and 
Egypt, it is nevertheless mastered by each individual, if at all, in the 
compass of a few years. It is in the world, but it is not inherited 



w 

by any one. Men are born rich, but not learned. The La Place of 
this generation did not come into life, with the knowledge possessed 
and recorded by the Newtons, the Keplers, and the Pythagorases of 
other days. — It is doubtful whether at three years old, he could count 
much beyond ten ; — and if at six, he was acquainted with any other 
cycloidal curves, than those generated by the trundling of his hoop, 
he was a prodigy indeed. — But by the time he was twenty one, he had 
mastered all the discoveries of all the philosophers who preceded him, 
and was prepared to build upon them the splendid superstructure of 
his own. — In like manner, the whole race of men, who thirty years 
hence are to be the active members of society, and some of them its 
guides and leaders, its Mansfields and Burkes, its Ellsworths, Mar- 
shall, and Websters, — the entire educated and intelligent population, 
which will have prepared itself with the knowledge requisite for car- 
rying on the business of life is, at this moment, enacting the part of 

the whining school-boy with his satchel 
And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
Unwillingly to school : — 

our future Ciceros are mewling infants; and our Arkwrights and 
Fultons, who are hereafter to unfold to our children new properties 
of matter ; — new forces of the elements ; — new applications of the 
mechanical powers, which may change the condition of things, are 
now, under the tuition of a careful nurse, with the safeguard of a 
pair of leading strings, attempting the perilous experiment of putting 
one foot before the other. — Yes, the ashes, that now moulder in yon- 
der grave-yard, the sole remains on earth of what was Whitney, — 
are not more unconscious of the stretch of the mighty mind, which 
they once enclosed ; — than the infant understandings of those now 
springing into life, who are destined to follow in the luminous track 
of his genius, to new and still more brilliant results, in the service 
of man. 

When we consider, in this way, how much is effected by educa- 
tion, in how short a time, for the individual and the community, and 
thence deduce some not inadequate conception of its prodigious ef- 
ficiency and power, we are led irresistibly to another reflection, upon 
its true nature. — We feel that it cannot be so much an act of the 
teacher as an act of the pupil. — It is not that the master, possessing 
this knowledge, has poured it out of his own mind into that of the 
learner ; — but the learner, by the native power of apprehension, judi- 



17 

ciously trained and wisely disciplined, beholds, comprehends, and 
appropriates, what is set before him, inform and order; and not 
only so, but with the first quickenings of the intellect, commences 
himself the creative and inventive processes. There is not the least 
doubt, that the active mind, judiciously trained, in reality sometimes 
invents for itself, not a little of that, which, — being already previously 
known and recorded, — is regarded as a part of the existing stock of 
knowledge. — From this principle also, we are led to an easy expla- 
nation of those curious appearances of simultaneous discoveries, in 
art and science, of which literary history records many examples ; — 
such as the rival pretensions of Newton and Leibnitz, — of Arkwright 
and Hargraves, — of Priestley and Lavoisier, — of Bell and Lancaster, 
— of Young and Champollion, which shew, that at any given period, 
especially in a state of society, favorable to the rapid diffusion of 
knowledge, the laws of the human mind are so sure and regular, that 
it is not an uncommon thing for different persons, in different coun- 
tries, to fall into the same train of reflection and thought, and to 
come to results and discoveries which, — injuriously limiting the crea- 
tive powers of the intellect, — we are ready to ascribe to imitation or 
plagiarism. 

It is indeed true, that one of the great secrets of the power of Ed- 
ucation, in its application to large numbers, is that it is a mutual work. 
Man has three teachers, — the school-master, — himself, — his neigh- 
bor. The instructions of the two first commence together ; and long 
after the functions of the school-master have been discharged, the 
duties of the two last go on together ; and what they effect is vastly 
more important than the work of the teacher, if estimated by the 
amount of knowledge self-acquired or caught by the collision or sym- 
pathy of other minds, compared with that which is directly imparted 
by the schoolmaster, in the morning of life. In fact what we learn 
at school and in college is but the foundation of the great work of 
self instruction and mutual instruction, with which the real education 
of life begins, when what is commonly called the Education is fin- 
ished. The daily intercourse of cultivated minds, — the emulous ex- 
ertions of the fellow votaries of knowledge, — controversy, — the in- 
spiring sympathy of a curious and intelligent public, are all powerful 
in putting each individual intellect to the stretch of its capacity. A 
hint, — a proposition, — an enquiry, proceeding from one mind, awa- 
kens new trains of thought, in a kindred mind, surveying the sub- 
ject from other points of view, and with other habits and resources 

3 



18 

of illustration ; — and thus truth is constantly multiplied and propaga- 
ted, by the mutual action and reaction of the thousands engaged in 
its pursuit. Hence the phenomena of Periclaean, Augustan, and Me- 
dicean ages, and golden eras of improvement; — and hence the educa- 
tion of each individual mind instead of being merely the addition of 
one, to the well instructed and well informed members of the com- 
munity, is the introduction of another member into the great family 
of intellects, each of which is a point not merely bright but radiant, 
and competent to throw off the beams of light and truth in every di- 
rection. Mechanical forces, from the moment they are put in ac- 
tion, by the laws of matter, grow fainter and fainter, till they are ex- 
hausted. — With each new application, something of their intensity is 
consumed. It can only be kept up by a continued or repeated re- 
sort to the source of power. Could Archimedes have found his place 
to stand upon, and a lever with which he could heave the earth from 
its orbit, the utmost he could have effected would have been to make 
it fall a dead weight into the sun. Not so the intellectual energy. 
If wisely exerted, its exercise instead of exhausting increases its 
strength ; and not only this, but as it moves onward from mind to 
mind, it awakens each to the same sympathetic self-propagating ac- 
tion. The circle spreads in every direction. Diversity of language 
does not check the progress of the great instructer, for he speaks in 
other tongues, and gathers new powers from the response of other 
schools of civilization. The pathless ocean does not impede, it ac- 
celerates his progress. Space imposes no barrier, time no period to 
his efforts ; and ages on ages, after the poor clay, in which the crea- 
tive intellect was enshrined, has mouldered back to its kindred dust, 
the truths, which it has unfolded, — moral or intellectual, — are hold- 
ing on their pathway of light and glory, awakening other minds to the 
same heavenly career. 

But it is more than time to apply these principles to the condition 
of the world, as it now exists, and to enquire what hope there is, — in 
the operation of this mighty engine, — of a great and beneficial pro- 
gress in the work of civilization. 

We certainly live in an enlightened age ; one in which civilization 
has reached a high point of advancement and extension, in this and 
several other countries. There are several nations, besides our own, 
where the Christian religion, civil government, the usual branches of 
industry, the diffusion of knowledge, useful and ornamental, and of 
the fine arts, have done and are doing great things for the happiness 



19 

of man. But when we look a little more nearly, it must be confessed 
that with all that has been done in this cause, the work, which still 
remains to be accomplished, is very great. The population of the 
globe is assumed, — in the more moderate estimates, to be seven hun- 
dred millions. Of these, two hundred and fifty millions are set down 
for America and Europe, and the residue for Asia and Africa. Two 
hundred and fifty millions again are assumed to be Christians ; — and 
of the residue three fourths are pagans. There is certainly a con- 
siderable diversity of condition among the various Asiatic and Afri- 
can, — who are also the unchristianized races, — as there is also among 
the European and American, who belong to the family of civilization 
and Christianity. But upon the whole, it must be admitted, that 
about two thirds of mankind are without the pale of civilization, as 
we understand it ; and of these a large majority are pagan savages 
or the slaves of the most odious and oppressive despotisms. The 
Chinese and the Hindoos, — who make up two thirds of this division 
of mankind, — contain, within their vast masses, perhaps the most fa- 
vorable specimens of this portion of the human family ; — and if we 
turn from them to the Turks, the Tartars, the Persians, — the native 
races of the interior of Africa, — the wretched tribes on the Coast, or 
the degraded population of Australia or Polynesia, we shall find but 
little, (except in the recent successful attempts at civilization), on which 
the eye of the Philanthropist can rest with satisfaction. Almost all is 
dark, cheerless, and wretched. 

Nor when we look into what is called the civilized portion of the 
globe, is the prospect as much improved, as we could wish. The 
broad mantle of civilization, like that of charity, covers a great deal, 
which, separately viewed, could claim no title to the name. Not to 
speak of the native tribes of America, or the nomadic races of the 
Russian empire, how vast and perilous is the inequality of mental 
condition among the members of the civilized States of the earth. 
Contemplate the peasantry of the greater part of the North of Eu- 
rope, attached as property to the soil on which they were born. The 
same class in the Austrian dominions, in Spain, in Portugal, in Italy, — 
if not held in precisely the same state of political disability, — are 
probably, to a very slight degree, more improved in their mental 
condition. In the middle and western States of Europe, — France, 
Holland, Germany, and Great Britain, although the laboring popu- 
lation is certainly in a more elevated and happier state, than in the 
countries just named ; yet how little opportunity for mental improve- 



20 

ment do even they possess ! We know that they pass their lives in 
labors of the most unremitted character, from which they derive 
nothing but the means of a most scanty support ; constantly relaps- 
ing into want, at the slightest reverse of fortune, or on the occur- 
rence of the first severe casualty. 

Then consider the character of a large portion of the population 
of the great cities of all countries, — London, St. Petersburg, Vienna ; 
where the extremes of human condition stand in painful juxta- 
position ; — and by the side of some specimens of all that adorns and 
exalts humanity, — the glory of our species, — we find a large mass 
of the population profoundly ignorant and miserably poor, and no 
small part of it sunk to the depths of want and vice. It is painful to 
reflect, in this age of refinement, how near the two opposite condi- 
tions of our nature may be brought, without the least communication 
of a direct genial influence, from one to the other. If any thing 
were necessary, beyond the slightest inspection of obvious facts, to 
shew the artificial structure of the society in which we live, and the 
need of some great and generous process of renovation, it would be 
the reflection, that, if a man wished to explore the very abyss of hu- 
man degradation, — to find how low one could get in the scale of na- 
ture, without going beneath the human race, — if he wished to find 
every want, every pang, every vice, which can unite to convert a hu- 
man being into a suffering loathsome brute, — he would not have to 
wander to the cannibal tribes of Australia already described, or to 
the dens of the bushmen of the Cape of Good Hope. He would 
need only to take a ten steps' walk from Westminster Abbey, or 
strike off a half a quarter of a mile, in almost any direction, from the 
very focus of all that is elegant and refined, — the pride and happi- 
ness of life, — in London or Paris. 

The painful impressions produced by these melancholy truths, are 
increased by the consideration, that in some parts of the region of 
civilization, the cause of the mind has seemed to go backward. Who 
can think of the former condition of the coasts of the Mediterranean, 
and not feel a momentary anxiety for the fortunes of the race ? In 
ancient times, the shores of the Mediterranean, all around, were civ- 
ilized after the type of that day, flourishing, and happy. In this fa- 
vored region, the human mind was developed, in many of its facul- 
ties, to an extent, and with a beauty, never surpassed, and scarcely 
ever equalled. Greece was the metropolis of this great intellectual 
republic : and through her letters and her arts, extended the domain 



21 

of civilization to Asia Minor and Syria, to Egypt and Africa, to Italy 
and Sicily, and even to Gallia and Iberia. What a state of the 
world it was, when all around this wide circuit, whithersoever the 
traveller directed his steps, he found cities filled with the beautiful 
creations of the architect and the sculptor ; marble temples in the 
grandest dimensions and finest proportions ; statues whose misera- 
ble and mutilated fragments are the models of modern art. Where- 
soever he sojourned, he found the schools of philosophy crowded 
with disciples, and heard the theatres ringing with the inspirations of 
the Attic muse, and the forum thronged by orators of consummate 
skill and classic renown. We are too apt, in forming our notions of 
the extent of Grecian civilization, to confine our thoughts to one or 
two renowned cities, — to Athens alone. But not only all Greece, 
but all the islands, Sicily and Magna Graecia, round all their coasts, 
the Ionian shore, the remote interior of Asia Minor and Syria even 
to the Euphrates, the entire course of the Nile up to its cataracts, 
and Libya far into the desert, were filled with populous and cultiva- 
ted cities. Places, whose names can scarcely be traced, but in an 
index of ancient geography, abounded in all the stores of art, and all 
the resources of instruction, in the time of Cicero. He makes one 
of the chief speakers in the Orator say, " At the present day, all 
Asia imitates Menecles of Alabanda and his brother." Who was 
Menecles, and where was Alabanda ? Cicero himself studied not 
only under Philo the Athenian, but Milo the Rhodian, Menippus of 
Stratonice, Dionysius of Magnesia, iEschylus of Cnidus, and Xeno- 
cles of Adramyttium. These were the masters, — the schools of 
Cicero ! Forgotten names, perished cities, abodes of art and elo- 
quence, of which the memory is scarcely preserved !* 

What then is the hope, that much can be effected in the promotion 
of the great object of the improvement of man, by the instrumental- 
ity of Education, as we have described it. And here, I am willing 
to own myself an enthusiast, and all I ask is that men will have the 
courage to follow the light of general principles, and patience for great 
effects to flow from mighty causes. If, after establishing the great 
truths of the prodigious power of the principles, by which the Edu- 
cation of the world is to be achieved, men suffer themselves to be 
perplexed, by apparent exceptions; — and especially, if they will in- 
sist upon beginning, carrying on and completing themselves every 

* North American Review, vol. xxxiv. page 13. 



22 

thing, which they propose or conceive for human improvement ; — 
forgetful that humanity, religion, national character, literature, and 
the influence of the arts ; — are great concerns, — spreading out over 
a lapse of ages, and infinite in their perfectibility ; then indeed the 
experience of one short life can teach nothing but despair. 

But if we will do justice to the power of the great principles, 
which I have attempted to develope, that are at work for the Edu- 
cation of man, — if we will study the causes, which in other times 
have retarded his progress, — which seem in some large portions of 
the globe to doom him even now to hopeless barbarity, — and if we 
will duly reflect, that what seems to be a retrograde step in the march 
of civilization, is sometimes, (and most memorably in the downfall 
of the Roman Empire,) the peculiar instrumentality, with which 
a still more comprehensive work of Reform is carried on, we shall 
have ample reason to conceive the brightest hopes for the progress of 
our race ; for the introduction within the pale of civilization of its 
benighted regions and the effective regeneration of all. We have now 
in our possession, three instruments of civilization unknown to anti- 
quity, of power separately to work almost any miracle of improve- 
ment, and the united force of which is adequate to the achievement 
of any thing not morally and physically impossible. These are 
the art of printing, — a sort of mechanical magic for the diffusion 
of knowledge ; — free representative Government, — a perpetual reg- 
ulator and equalizer of human condition, the inequalities of which 
are the great scourge of society ; — and lastly a pure and spiritual 
religion, — the deep fountain of generous enthusiasm, — the mighty 
spring of bold and lofty designs, — the great sanctuary of moral pow- 
er. The want of one or all of these satisfactorily explains the vicis- 
situdes of the ancient civilization ; and the possession of them all as 
satisfactorily assures the permanence of that, which has been for 
some centuries and is now going on, and warrants the success of 
the great work of educating the world. — Does any one suppose, that 
if knowledge among the Greeks, instead of being confined to the 
large cities and in them to a few professional sophists and rich slave- 
holders, had pervaded the entire population in that and the neighbor- 
ing countries, as it is niade to do in modern times by the press ; — if 
instead of their anomalous, ill-balanced, tumultuary republics and 
petty military tyrannies, they had been united, in a well digested sys- 
tem of representative government or even constitutional monarchy, — 
they and the stales around them, Persia, Macedonia, and Rome ; — 



23 

and if, to all these principles of political stability, they had, instead of 
their corrupting and degrading superstitions, been blessed with the 
light of a pure and spiritual faith ; — does any one suppose that Greece 
and Ionia, under circumstances like these, would have relapsed into 
barbarism ? Impossible. — The Phenicians invented letters, but what 
did they do with them ? Apply them to the record, the diffusion, 
transmission, and preservation of knowledge ? — Unhappily for them, 
that was the acquisition of a far subsequent period. The wonderful 
invention of alphabetical writing, — after all perhaps the most won- 
derful of human inventions, — was probably applied by its authors to 
no other purpose, than to carve the name of a king on his rude stat- 
ue, or perhaps to record some simple catalogue of titles, on the 
walls of a temple. So it was with the Egyptians, whose hieroglyph- 
ics have recently been discovered to be an alphabetical character ; 
but, which were far too cumbrous to be employed for an extensive 
and popular diffusion of knowledge, and which, with all the wisdom 
of their inventors, are not certainly known to have been applied to 
the composition of books. It was the freer use of this flexible in- 
strument of knowledge, which gave to Greece her eminence, — which 
created so many of the objects of her national pride ; and redeem- 
ed the memory of her distinguished sons from that forgetfulness, which 
has thrown its vast pall over the great and brave men and noble deeds 
of the mighty but unlettered states of antiquity. No one thinks 
that the powerful and prosperous nations, which flourished for two 
thousand years, on the Nile and the Euphrates, were destitute of 
heroes, patriots, and statesmen. But, for want of a popular literature, 
their merits and fame did not, at the time, incorporate themselves 
with the popular character ; and now that they are no more, their 
memory lies crushed with their ashes beneath their mausoleums and 
pyramids. The mighty cities they built, the seats of their power, 
are as desolate as the cities they wasted. The races of men, whom 
they ruled and arrayed in battle, bound in an iron servitude, — degra- 
ded by mean superstitions, — sunk before the first invader, — and now 
the very languages, on whose breath their glory was wafted from the 
Atlas to the Indus, are lost and forgotten, because they were never 
impressed on the undying page of a written literature. 

The more diffusive and popular nature of the Grecian literature, 
was evidently the cause of the preservation of the national spirit of 
the Greeks, and with it of their political existence. Greece, it is 
true, fell, and with it the civilization of the ancient world. In this, 



24 

it may seem to present us rather an illustration of the inefficiency 
than of the power of the preservative principle of letters. But let 
us bear in mind, in the first place, that greatly as the Greeks excelled 
the eastern nations in the diffusion of knowledge, they yet fell infi- 
nitely below the modern world, furnished as it is with the all-effica- 
cious art of printing. Still more, let us recollect, that if Greece, in 
her fall, affords an example of the insufficiency of the ancient civiliza- 
tion, her long, glorious, and never wholly unsuccessful struggles, and 
her recent recovery from barbarism, furnish the most pleasing proof, 
that there is a life-spring of immortality in the combined influence of 
letters, freedom, and religion. Greece indeed fell. But how did 
she fall? Did she fall like Babylon ? Did she fall "like Lucifer, 
never to hope again?" Or did she not rather go down, like that 
brighter luminary, of which Lucifer is but the herald? 

So sinks the day star in the ocean's bed, 

And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 

And tricks his beams, and, with new spangled ore, 

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. 

What, but the ever-living power of literature and religion, preserv- 
ed the light of civilization and the intellectual stores of the past, un- 
extinguished in Greece, during the long and dreary ages of the de- 
cline and downfall of the Roman empire? What preserved these ster- 
ile provinces and petty islets from sinking, beyond redemption, in the 
gulf of barbarity in which Cyrene, and Egypt, and Syria, were swallow- 
ed up? It was Christianity and letters, retreating to their fastnesses 
on mountain tops and in secluded vallies, — the heights of Athos, the 
peaks of Meteora, the caverns of Arcadia, the secluded cells of 
Patmos. Here, while all else in the world seemed swept away, by 
one general flood of barbarism, civil discord, and military oppression, 
the Greek monks of the dark ages preserved and transcribed their 
Homers, their Platos, and their Plutarchs. There never was, strict- 
ly speaking, a dark age in Greece. Eustathius wrote his admirable 
commentaries on Homer, in the middle of the twelfth century. That 
surely, if ever, was the midnight of the mind ; but it was clear and 
serene day, in his learned cell ; and Italy, proud already of her Dante, 
her Boccaccio, and Petrarch, — her Medicean patronage and her re- 
viving arts, — did not think it beneath her to sit at the feet of the poor 
fugitives from the final downfall of Constantinople. 

What, but the same causes, enforced by the power of the press, 
and by the sympathy with Greece which pervaded the educated 



25 

community of the modern world, has accomplished the political res- 
toration of that country ? Thirteen years ago, it lay under a hope- 
less despotism. Its native inhabitants, as such, was marked out for 
oppression and plunder, — tolerated in their religion for the sake of 
the exactions, of which it furnished the occasion, — shut out from the 
hopes and honors of social life, — agriculture, and all the visible and 
tangible means of acquisition, discountenanced, — -commerce, instead 
of lifting her honored front, like an ocean queen, as she does here, 
creeping furtively from islet to islet and concealing her precarious 
gains, — the seas infested with pirates and the land with robbers, — 
the population exhibiting a strange mixture of the virtues of the ban- 
dit and the vices of the slave, but possessing, in generous transmis- 
sion from better days, the elements of a free and enlightened com- 
munity. Such was Greece thirteen years ago, and the prospect of 
throwing off the Turkish yoke, in every respect but this last, was as 
wild and chimerical, as the effort to throw off the Cordilleras from 
this continent. In all respects but one, it would have been as rea- 
sonable to expect to raise a harvest of grain from the barren rock of 
Hydra, as to found a free and prosperous state, in this abject Turk- 
ish province. But the standard of liberty was raised, on the soil of 
Greece, by the young men who returned from the universities of 
western Europe, and the civilized world was electrified at the ti- 
dings. It was the birth-place of the arts, — the cradle of letters. 
Reasons of state held back the governments of Europe and of Amer- 
ica from an interference in their favor, but intellectual sympathy, reli- 
gious and moral feeling, and the public opinion of the age, rose in 
their might, and swept all the barriers of state logic away. They 
were feeble, unarmed, without organization, distracted by feuds ; an 
adamantine wall of neutrality on the west ; an incensed barbarian 
empire, — horde after horde, — from the confines of Anatolia to the 
cataracts of the Nile, — pouring down upon them, on the east. Their 
armies and their navies were a mockery of military power, their re- 
sources calculated to inspire rather commiseration than fear. But 
their spirits were sustained, and their wearied hands upheld, by the 
benedictions and the succors of the friends of freedom. The memo- 
ry of their great men of old went before them to battle, and scattered 
dismay in the ranks of the barbarous foe, as he moved, like Satan in 
hell, with uneasy steps, over the burning soil of freedom. The sym- 
pathy of all considerate and humane persons was enlisted in behalf 
of the posterity, however degenerate, of those, who had taught let- 

4 



26 

ters and humanity to the world. Men could not bear, with patience, 
that Christian people, striking for liberty, should be trampled down 
by barbarian infidels, on the soil of Attica and Sparta. The public 
opinion of the world was enlisted on their side, — and Liberty her- 
self, personified, seemed touched with compassion, as she heard the 
cry of her venerated parent, the guardian genius of Greece. She 
hastened to realize the holy legend of the Roman daughter, and send 
back from her pure bosom the tide of life to the wasting form of her 

parent : — 

The milk of his own gift ; — it is her sire 
To whom she renders back the debt of blood, 
Born with her birth; — no, he shall not expire. 

Greece did not expire. The sons of Greece caught new life from 
desperation ; the plague of the Turkish arms was stayed ; till the 
governments followed, where the people had led the way, and the war, 
which was sustained by the literary and religious sympathies of the 
friends of art and science, was brought to a triumphant close, by the 
armies and navies of Europe : — and there they now stand, the first 
great re-conquest of modern civilization. 

Many, I doubt not, who hear me, have had the pleasure, within a 
few weeks, of receiving a Greek oration, pronounced in the temple 
of Theseus, on the reception at Athens of the first official act of the 
young Christian prince, under whom the government of this interest- 
ing country is organized. What contemplations does it not awaken, 
to behold a youthful Bavarian prince, deputed by the great powers 
of Europe, to go, with the guaranties of letters, religion, and the arts, 
to the city of Minerva, which had reached the summit of human civil- 
ization, ages before Bavaria had emerged from the depths of the 
Black Forest ! One can almost imagine the shades of the great of 
other days, the patriots and warriors, the philosophers and poets, the 
historians and orators, rising from their renowned graves, to greet 
the herald of their country's restoration. One can almost fancy that 
the sacred dust of the Ceramicus must kindle into life as he draws 
near ; that the sides of Delphi and Parnassus, and the banks of the 
Ilissus, must swarm with the returning spirits of ancient times. Yes! 
Marathon and Thermopylae are moved to meet him at his coming. — 
Martyrs of liberty, names that shall never die, — Solon and Pericles, 
Socrates and Phocion, not now with their cups of hemlock in their 
hands, but with the deep lines of their living cares effaced from their 
serene brows, — at the head of that glorious company of poets, sages, 



27 

artists and heroes, which the world has never equalled, descend the fa- 
mous road from the Acropolis to the sea, to bid the Deliverer welcome 
to the land of glory and the arts. " Remember," they cry, " Oh, 
Prince ! the land thou art set to rule ; it is the soil of freedom. 
Remember the great and wise of old, in whose place thou art called 
to stand, — the fathers of liberty; remember the precious blood which 
has wet these sacred fields; pity the bleeding remnants of what was 
once so grand and fair; respect these time-worn and venerable ruins; 
raise up the fallen columns of these beautiful fanes, and consecrate 
them to the Heavenly Wisdom ; restore the banished muses to their 
native seat; be the happy instrument, in the hand of Heaven, of 
enthroning letters, and liberty, and religion, on the summits of our 
ancient hills ; and pay back the debt of the civilized world, to revi- 
ving, regenerated Greece. So shall the blessing of those ready to 
perish come upon thee, and ages after the vulgar train of conquerors 
and princes is forgotten, thou shalt be remembered, as the youthful 
Restorer of Greece !" 

This is a most important step in the extension of civilization; what 
is to hinder its farther rapid progress, I own, I do not perceive. On 
the contrary, it seems to me, that political causes are in operation, 
destined at no very distant period, to throw open the whole domain 
of ancient improvement to the great modern instruments of national 
education, — the press, free government, and the Christian faith. 
The Ottoman power, a government which till lately has shewn itself 
hostile to all improvement, is already dislodged from its main positions 
in Europe, and will no doubt before long be removed from that which 
it still retains. The Turk, who four centuries ago threatened Italy, 
and long since that period carried terror to the gates of Vienna, will 
soon find it no easy matter to sustain himself in Constantinople. His 
empire is already, as it were, encircled by that of Russia, a govern- 
ment despotic indeed, but belonging to the school of European civili- 
zation, acknowledging the same law of nations, connected with the 
intellectual family of western Europe and America, and making 
most rapid advances, in the education of the various races, which fill 
her vast domain. It is true, that some prejudices exist against that 
government, at the present time, in the minds of the friends of lib- 
eral institutions. But let it not be forgotten, that within the last cen- 
tury, as great a work of improvement has been carried on in the 
Russian empire, as was ever accomplished, in an equal period, in the 
history of man ; and that it is doubtful whether, in any other way, 



28 

than through the medium of such a government, the light of the 
mind could penetrate to a tenth part of the heterogeneous materials, 
of which that empire is composed. 

It is quite within the range of political probability, that the extend- 
ed dominion of the czar will be the immediate agent of regenerating 
Western Asia. If so, I care not how soon the Russian banner is 
planted on the walls of Constantinople. No man can suppose that 
an instantaneous transition can be made in Asiatic Turkey, from the 
present condition of those regions to one of pure republican liberty. 
The process must be gradual and may be slow. If the Russian 
power be extended over them, it will be a civilized and a Christian 
sway. Letters, law, and religion will follow in the train ; and the 
foundation will be laid for further progress, — in the advancing intelli- 
gence of the people. 

On the African coast, the great centre of barbarism has fallen ; 
and the opportunity seems to present itself of bringing much of that in- 
teresting region within the pale of civilization, under the auspices of 
the politest nation in Europe. The man who but fifteen years ago 
should have predicted that within so short a period of time, Greece 
would be united into an independent state under a European prince ; 
— that a Russian alliance should be sought to sustain the tottering 
power of the Ottoman porte ; — that Algiers, which had so long bid de- 
fiance to Christendom, would be subjected ; that a flourishing colony 
of the descendants of Africa should be planted on its western coast ; 
and that the mystery of the Niger would be solved and steamboats 
be found upon its waters, would have been deemed a wild enthusi- 
ast. And now when we reflect that, at so many different points, the 
whole power of modern civilization is turned upon western Asia and 
Africa; — that our printing presses, benevolent institutions, missiona- 
ry associations, and governments, are exerting their energies, to push 
the empire of improvement into the waste places, — when we consid- 
er, that the generation coming forward, in these regions, will live un- 
der new influences, and instead of the Musulman barbarism, repres- 
sing every movement toward liberty and refinement, that the influ- 
ence and interest of the leading powers of Europe will be exerted 
to promote the great end ; is it loo sanguine to think, that a grand 
and most extensive work of national Education is begun, not destin- 
ed to stand still or go backward ? Go backward did I say ; what is 
to hinder its indefinite progress? Why should these regions be doom- 
ed to perpetuated barbarity ? Hitherto they have been kept barba- 



29 

rous by the influence of an antichristian, despotic, illiterate govern- 
ment. At present, vast regions both of Eastern and Western Asia, 
and portions of Africa, on the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, are 
under the protection of enlightened, civilized, and christian govern- 
ments, whose interest and genius are alike pledged to promote the 
improvement of their subjects. Why should they not improve, and 
improve with rapidity ? They occupy a soil, which once bore an in- 
telligent population. — They breathe a climate, beneath which the arts 
and letters once flourished. They inhabit the coasts of that renowned 
sea, whose opposite shores of old seemed to respond to each oth- 
er, in grand intellectual concert, like the emulous choirs of some 
mighty cathedral, sending back to each other, from the resounding 
galleries, the alternate swell of triumph and praise. They are still 
inhabited by men, — rational, immortal men, — men of no mean de- 
scent, — whose progenitors enrolled their names high on the lists of 
renown. 

For myself, I see nothing to prevent, and little finally to retard the 
work. The causes are adequate to its achievement — the times are 
propitious, — the indications are significant, — and the work itself, though 
great indeed, is in no degree chimerical or extravagant. What is 
it? — To teach those, who have eyes to see ; to pour instruction into 
ears open to receive it ; to aid rational minds to think ; to kindle im- 
mortal souls to a consciousness of their faculties ; — to co-operate with 
the strong and irrepressible tendency of our natures ; to raise, out of 
barbarity and stupidity, men, who belong to the same race of beings 
as Newton and Locke, as Shakespeare and Milton, as Franklin and 
Washington. Let others doubt the possibility of doing it; 1 cannot 
conceive the possibility of its remaining much longer undone. The 
difficulty of civilizing Asia and Africa ? — I am more struck with the 
difficulty of keeping them barbarous. When I think what man is, 
in his powers and improveable capacities ; — when I reflect on the 
principles of Education, as I have already attempted in this address 
to develope them, my wonder is at the condition to which man is 
sunk, and with which he is content, and not at any project or proph- 
ecy of his elevation. On the contrary, I see a thousand causes at 
work to hasten the civilization of the world. I see the interest of the 
commercial nations enlisted in the cause of humanity and religion. I 
see refinement, and the arts, and Christianity, borne on the white wings 
of trade, to the farthest shores, and penetrating by mysterious riv- 
ers the hidden recesses of mighty continents. I behold a private 



30 

company, beginning with commercial adventure, ending in a mighty 
association of merchant princes, and extending a government of 
Christian men over a hundred millions of benighted heathens, in the 
barbarous east ; and thus opening a direct channel of communication 
between the very centre of European civilization and the heart of 
India. I see the ambition of extended sway carrying the eagles of a 
prosperous empire, and with them the fruitful rudiments of a civil- 
ized rule, over the feeble provinces of a neighboring despotism. I 
see the great work of African colonization auspiciously commen- 
ced, promising no scanty indemnity for the cruel wrongs, which that 
much injured continent has endured from the civilized world, and 
sending home to the shores of their fathers an intelligent well-educated 
colored population, going back with all the arts of life to this long 
oppressed land ; and I can see the soldiers of the cross beneath the 
missionary banner, penetrating the most inaccessible regions, reach- 
ing the most distant islands, and achieving, in a (ew years, a crea- 
tion of moral and spiritual Education, for which centuries might have 
seemed too short. When I behold all these active causes, backed 
by all the power of public sentiment, christian benevolence, the so- 
cial principle, and the very spirit of the age, I can believe almost any 
thing of hope and promise. I can believe every thing, sooner, than 
that all this mighty moral enginery can remain powerless and inef- 
fectual. It is against the law of our natures, fallen though they be, 
which tend not downwards but upwards. To those, who doubt the 
eventual regeneration of mankind, I would say in the language, 
which the wise and pious poet has put into the mouth of the fallen 
angel, 

Let such bethink them — 
That in our proper motion we ascend 
Up to our native seat. Descent and fall 
To us are adverse. 

Let him, who is inclined to distrust the efficiency of the social and 
moral causes, which are quietly at work for the improvement of the 
nations, reflect on the phenomena of the natural world. Whence 
come the waters, which swell the vast current of the great rivers, 
and fill up the gulfs of the bottomless deep ? — Have they not all 
gone up to the clouds, in a most thin and unseen vapor, from the 
wide surface of land and sea ? — Have not these future billows, on 
which navies are soon to be tost, in which the great monsters of the 
deep will disport themselves, been borne aloft on the bosom of a fleecy 



31 

cloud, — chased by a breeze, — with scarce enough of substance to 
catch the hues of a sunbeam ; — and have they not descended, some- 
times indeed in drenching rains, — but far more diffusively in dew 
drops, and gentle showers, and feathery snows, over the expanse of a 
continent, and been gathered successively into the slender rill, the 
brook, the placid stream, till they grew at last into the mighty river, 
pouring down his tributary floods, into the unfathomed ocean ? 

Yes ! let him who wishes to understand the power of the princi- 
ples at work for the improvement of our race, — if he cannot com- 
prehend their vigor in the schools of learning, — if he cannot see the 
promise of their efficiency in the very character of the human mind; — 
if in the page of history, sacred and profane, chequered with vicissi- 
tude as it is, — he cannot, nevertheless, behold the clear indications 
of a progressive nature, let him accompany the missionary bark to 
the Sandwich islands. He will there behold a people, sunk till with- 
in fifteen years in the depths of savage and of heathen barbarity, — 
indebted to the intercourse of the civilized world for nothing but 
wasting diseases and degrading vices ; placed by Providence in a 
garden of fertility and plenty, but by revolting systems of tyranny and 
superstition, kept in a state of want, corruption, war, and misery. 
The Christian benevolence of a private American association casts its 
eyes upon them. — Three or four individuals without power, without 
arms, without funds, except such as the frugal resources of private be- 
nevolence could furnish them, — strong only in pious resolutions, and 
the strength of a righteous cause, land on these remote islands, and 
commence the task of moral and spiritual reform. If ever there 
was a chimerical project in the eyes of worldly wisdom, this was one. 
If this enterprise is feasible, tell me what is not ! — Within less than 
half the time usually assigned to a generation of men, sixty thousands 
of individuals, in a population of one hundred and fifty thousands, 
have been taught the elements of human learning. Whole tribes of 
savages have demolished their idols, abandoned their ancient cruel 
superstitions and barbarous laws, and adopted some of the best insti- 
tutions of civilization and Christianity. It would, I think, be difficult 
to find, in the pages of history, the record of a moral improvement 
of equal extent, effected in a space of time so inconsiderable, and 
furnishing so striking an exemplification of the power of the means at 
work at the present day, for the education and improvement of man. 

If I mistake not, we behold in the British empire in the east, anoth- 
er most auspicious agent for the extension of moral influences over 



32 

that vast region. It is true that hitherto commercial profit and terri- 
torial aggrandizement have seemed to be the only objects, which 
have been pursued by the government. But when we look at home 
at the character of the British people, an enlightened, benevolent, 
and liberal community ; when we consider the power of the press and 
the force of public sentiment in that country, and the disposition to 
grapple with the most arduous questions evinced by its rulers, we 
may hope, without extravagance, that a glorious day of improvement 
is destined to dawn on India, under the patronage and auspices of 
Great Britain. The thoughts of her public spirited and benevolent 
men have long been bent on this great object. Some of the finest 
minds, that have adorned our nature, have labored in this field. I 
need not recall to you the boundless learning, the taste, and the elo- 
quence of Sir William Jones, nor the classical elegance, the ardent 
philanthropy, the religious self devotion of Heber, nor repeat a long 
list of distinguished names, who for fifty years have labored for the 
diffusion of knowledge in the east. — Nor labored in vain. Cheering 
indications are given in various quarters, of a great moral change in 
the condition of these vast and interesting regions, once the abode of 
philosophy and the arts. The bloodiest and most revolting of the 
superstitions of the Hindoo paganism has been suppressed, by the 
British government. The widow is no longer compelled, by the 
fanatical despotism of caste, to sacrifice herself on the funeral pile of 
her husband. The whole system of the castes enjoys only the tolera- 
tion of the government ; and being at war with the fundamental prin- 
ciples of the British law, as it is with the interest of the great part of 
the population, must, at no distant period, crumble away. The con- 
solidation of the British empire in India promises a respite from the 
wars, hitherto perpetually raging among the native states of India, 
and forming of themselves an effectual barrier to every advance out 
of barbarism. The field seems now open to genial influences. It 
is impossible to repress the hope, that out of the deep and living foun- 
tains of benevolence, in the land of our fathers, a broad and fertilizing 
current will be poured over the thirsty plains of India ; — the abodes 
of great geniuses in the morning of the world ; — and that letters, arts, 
and Religion will be extended to a hundred millions of these mild 
and oppressed fellow beings. 

But it is time to relieve your patience : I will do it, after a reflec- 
tion on the relation, which this country bears to the work of general 
education ; and all I wish to say will be comprised in one word of en- 
couragement and one of warning*. 



33 

The recent agitations of the Country have a bearing on the great 
moral questions we have been discussing, more important, as it seems 
to me, than their immediate political aspect. In its present united 
condition, that of a state already large and powerful, and rapidly in- 
creasing, — its population more generally well-educated than that of 
any other country, and imbued with an unusual spirit of personal, 
social, and moral enterprize, it presents in itself the most effective or- 
ganization imaginable, for the extension of the domain of improve- 
ment, at home and abroad. The vital principle of this organization 
is the Union of its members. In this they enjoy an exemption from 
the heavy burden of great local establishments of government, and 
still more from the curse of neighboring states, eternal border war. 
In virtue of this principle, they are enabled to devote all their ener- 
gies in peace and tranquillity, to the cultivation of the arts of private 
life, and the pursuit of every great work of public utility, benevo- 
lence, and improvement. To attack the principle of union is to at- 
tack the prosperity of the whole and of every part of the country ; it 
is to check the outward developement of our national activity ; to 
turn our resources and energies, now exerted in every conceivable 
manner for public and private benefit, into new channels of mutual 
injury and ruin. Instead of roads and canals to unite distant states, 
the hill tops of those, which adjoin each other, would be crowned 
with fortresses ; and our means would be strained to the utmost, in 
the support of as many armies and navies, as there were rival sove- 
reignties. Nor would the evil rest with the waste of treasure. The 
thoughts and feelings of men would assume a new direction ; and 
military renown, and rank, plunder and revenge be the ruling princi- 
ples of the day. Destroy the union of the States and you destroy their 
character ; change their occupations ; blast their prospects. You 
shut the annals of the republic, and open the book of kings. You 
shut the book of peace, and you open the book of war. You unbar 
the gates of hell on the legion of civil discord, ambition, havoc, blood- 
shed, and ruin. 

Let these considerations never be absent from our minds. But if 
the question is asked, what encouragement is there that a vast deal 
can be done, in a short time, for the improvement of man, I would 
say to him who puts the question, look around you. In what coun- 
try do you live ? under what state of things has it grown up ? Do 
you bear in mind, that in a space of time, one half of which has been 
covered by the lives of some yet in existence, in two hundred years, 

5 



34 

these wide spread settlements, with so many millions of inhabitants, — 
abounding in all the blessings of life, more liberally and equally be- 
stowed than in any other country, have been built up in a remote and 
savage wilderness ? Do you recollect, that it is not half a century, 
since, with a population comparatively insignificant, she vindicated 
her independence in a war against the oldest and strongest govern- 
ment on earth ? Do you consider that the foundations of these pow- 
erful and prosperous states were laid, by a few persecuted and ag- 
grieved private citizens, of moderate fortune, unsupported, scarcely 
tolerated, by the government ? If you will go back to the very origin, 
do you not perceive, that, as if to consecrate this country from the 
outset as a most illustrious example of what a Man can do, it was 
owing to the fixed impression on the heart of one friendless mar- 
iner, pursued through long years of fruitless solicitation and fainting 
hope, that these vast American continents are made a part of the 
heritage of civilized men ? Look around you again at the institutions, 
which are the pride and blessing of the country. See our entire 
religious establishments, — unendowed by the state, supported by the 
united efforts of the individual citizens. See the great literary institu- 
tions of our country, especially those in New England, — Hanover, 
Williams, Bowdoin, Brown, Amherst, and others, — founded by the 
liberality of citizens of moderate fortune, or by the small combined 
contributions of public spirited benefactors, aided, at the most, by 
moderate endowments from the public treasury : — And " the two 
twins of learning," if I may without arrogance, name them apart 
from the rest; this most efficient and respected Seminary, within 
whose walls we are now convened, and my own ancient and belov- 
ed Harvard ; to whom and what do they trace their origin ? Yale, to 
the ten worthy fathers, who assembled at Branford in 1700, and lay- 
ing each a few volumes on the table, said, " I give these books for 
the founding of a college in this colony ;" and Harvard, to the dying 
munificence of an humble minister of the Gospel, who landed on the 
shores of America but to lay his dust in its soil ; but who did not fin- 
ish his brief sojourn, till he had accomplished a work of usefulness, 
which, we trust, will never die. Whence originated the great reform 
in our prisons, which has accomplished its wonders of philanthropy 
and mercy, in the short space of eight years, and made the peniten- 
tiaries of America the model of the penal institutions of the world ? 
It had its origin in the visit of a missionary, with his bible, to the 
convict's cell. — Whence sprang up the mighty Temperance reform, 



35 

which has already done so much to wipe off a great blot from the 
character of the country ? It was commenced on so small scale, that 
it is not easy to assign its effective origin to a precise source. — And 
counsels and efforts, as humble and inconsiderable at the outset, gave 
the impulse to the Missionary Cause of modern times, which, going 
forth, with its devoted champions, conquering and to conquer, be- 
neath 

the great ensign of Messiah — 
Aloft by angels borne, their sign in Heaven, 

has already gained a peaceful triumph over the farthest islands, and 
added a new kingdom to the realms of civilization and Christianity. 



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